Beyond access: A relational and resource-based model of household Internet adoption in isolated communities

Isolated rural communities face specific challenges associated with their geographical context in the digital inclusion process. Thus, based on a relational and resource-based model as well as diffusion research, this study explored personal, positional factors, as well as material and social resources of household Internet connection in remote communities that received infrastructure access for the first time between 2010 and 2011 in Chile. A face-to-face representative survey conducted in 22 communities revealed that, among personal variables, age and innovative personality played a role in household Internet adoption. Material resources such as income and transport connectivity were also relevant. However, social resources were among the most significant predictors. That is, the presence of children in the household and larger social networks were associated with greater chances of Internet connection.     

Conceptualizing digital and physical connectivity: The position of European cities in Internet backbone and air traffic flows

‘Digital’ telecommunication flows and ‘physical’ corporeal flows provide researchers with comprehensive indicators of the economic interactions between cities. However, previous research drawing on telecommunication-based measures of inter-urban connectivity has been hampered by inadequate conceptualizations and data. This paper draws on this observation to devise a new approach for measuring inter-urban connectivity based on a city’s insertion in Internet backbone networks. The straightforward example of air transport flows is thereby used to outline this approach. To investigate telecommunication and air passenger flows, use is made of European statistics on Internet eXchange Points and the MIDT airline database respectively. The approach is illustrated through a systematic comparison of the position of European cities in both types of networks. It is found that European cities assume largely similar hierarchical levels in terms of digital and physical information flows, albeit that the digital connectivity of centrally located European cities is often somewhat higher than that of peripheral cities with a similar levels of physical connectivity.     

Revisiting Wireless Internet Connectivity: 5G vs Wi-Fi 6

In recent years, significant attention has been directed toward the fifth generation of wireless broadband connectivity known as ‘5G’, currently being deployed by Mobile Network Operators. Surprisingly, there has been considerably less attention paid to ‘Wi-Fi 6’, the new IEEE 802.1ax standard in the family of Wireless Local Area Network technologies with features targeting private, edge-networks. This paper revisits the suitability of cellular and Wi-Fi in delivering high-speed wireless Internet connectivity. Both technologies aspire to deliver significantly enhanced performance, enabling each to deliver much faster wireless broadband connectivity, and provide further support for the Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine communications, positioning the two technologies as technical substitutes in many usage scenarios. We conclude that both are likely to play important roles in the future, and simultaneously serve as competitors and complements. We anticipate that 5G will remain the preferred technology for wide-area coverage, while Wi-Fi 6 will remain the preferred technology for indoor use, thanks to its much lower deployment costs. However, the traditional boundaries that differentiated earlier generations of cellular and Wi-Fi are blurring. Proponents of one technology may argue for the benefits of their chosen technology displacing the other, requesting regulatory policies that would serve to tilt the marketplace in their favour. We believe such efforts need to be resisted, and that both technologies have important roles to play in the marketplace, based on the needs of heterogeneous use cases. Both technologies should contribute to achieving the goal of providing affordable, reliable, and ubiquitously available high-capacity wireless broadband connectivity.     

Multihoming, content delivery networks, and the market for Internet connectivity

Peering points between different Internet service providers (ISPs) are among the bottlenecks of the Internet. Multihoming (MH) and content delivery networks (CDNs) are two technical solutions to bypass peering points and to improve the quality of data delivery. So far, however, there is no research that analyzes the economic effects of MH and CDNs on the market for Internet connectivity. This paper develops a static market model with locked-in end users and paid content. It shows that MH and CDNs create the possibility for terminating ISPs to engage in monopolistic pricing towards content providers, leading to a shift of rents from end users and content providers to ISPs. Implications for future innovations are discussed.     

Access to and penetration of ICT in rural Thailand

This paper presents an econometric study of information and communication technology (ICT) in all 70,000 rural villages in Thailand, where the ICT considered consists of fixed-line telephone service, mobile telephone service, public telephones, computers, and Internet service. The results may provide information that helps policymakers decide where to put limited resources to promote ICT, and helps profit-seeking ICT companies target regions that maximize revenues. The study found that education is far more important than income in predicting the percentage of households who adopt ICT services, and that some unexpected variables such as the penetration of pickup trucks are useful predictors as well. Even in areas where fixed-line phone service is available, 70% of households with computers choose not to become Internet subscribers, although many presumably have enough money and technical knowledge. By separating availability from penetration of ICT, the study found that they can have different predictors, which means that researchers who do not separate them may get misleading results. There is no evidence showing mobile telephone service as a substitute for fixed-line telephone service. Also, public telephone service had little or no impact as a substitute for fixed-line or mobile telephone service, so phone companies need not fear that deployment of more public telephones will decrease their subscribership. Finally, there appears to be significant unmet demand for telephone service in rural Thailand where the infrastructure does not yet exist.     

Linguistic diversity on the internet: Arabic,Chinese and Cyrillic script top-level domain names

The deployment of Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic top-level domain names is explored in this research by analyzing technical and policy documents of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), as well as newspaper articles in the respective language regions. The tension between English uniformity at the root level of the Internet׳s domain names system, and language diversity in the global Internet community, has resulted in various technological solutions surrounding Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic language domain names. These standards and technological solutions ensure the security and stability of the Internet; however, they do not comprehensively address the linguistic diversity needs of the Internet. ICANN has been transforming into an international policy organization, yet its linguistic diversity policies appear disconnected from the diversity policies of the United Nations, and remain technically oriented. Linguistic diversity in relation to IDNs at this stage mostly focus on the language representation of major languages that are spoken in powerful nation-states, who use the rhetoric of national pride, local business branding, and inclusion of non-English speakers. This situation surfaces the tension between nation-states and the new international governing institution ICANN.     

Weaving the Western Web: explaining differences in Internet connectivity among OECD countries

Despite the Internet's increasing importance, there is little social scientific work that addresses its diffusion. Our knowledge is especially limited with respect to the conditions that encourage its spread across nations. This paper takes a first step in explaining the differences in Internet connectivity among OECD countries. After examining the impact of economic indicators, human capital, institutional legal environment, and existing technological infrastructure, the empirical analyses show that economic wealth and telecommunications policy are the most salient predictors of a nation's Internet connectivity.     

Broadband Internet access,awareness, and use: Analysis of United States household data

Data obtained from a nationwide survey of US residences during September and October 2002 are used to investigate household awareness of high-speed Internet access, profile Internet access and use, and gain insight into how important always-on, price, speed, installation, and reliability attributes are in their choice of service. Preliminary analysis suggests relatively high awareness of cable modem and DSL availability. Almost 19 percent of the sample have high-speed connectivity, and the mean price paid per month for dial-up and high-speed access is $19.76 and $42.36, respectively. Preference for high-speed access is apparent among households with higher income and college education. About 63 percent of high-speed users have more than five years of online experience, compared to 48 percent of dial-up users, and high-speed users are twice as likely to share music files and photos, bank, trade stocks, and pay bills “many times a week” than dial-up users. Willingness-to-pay estimates indicate reliability of service, speed, and always-on connectivity are important Internet access attributes.     

trends in Internet-based business-to-business marketing

The Internet is changing the transactional paradigms under which businesses-to-business marketers operate. Business-to-business marketers that take advantage of the operational efficiencies and effectiveness that emerge from utilizing the Internet in transactions are outperforming firms that utilize traditional transactional processes. As an example, Dell computers, by utilizing business-to-business processes that take advantage of the Internet, has gained the largest market share in the PC business when compared to traditional manufacturers such as Compaq. This paper first examines the genesis of the Internet movement in business-to-business markets. The long-term impact of the increase of business-to-business utilization of the Internet on the marketing theory and marketing process is then discussed. Finally, managerial implications and directions for future research are highlighted.     

创业之痛

和不同的创业者聊天,听一个个苦辣酸甜的故事。甜要放在最后,有些人尝到了,有些人还在追逐着。有人说,创业是一个梦想,也有人说,创业是一种生活。理想,才华,坚持;挑战,失败,再出发……不知道有多少创业者曾在最深的夜里想起那首《真心英雄》,很多的创业故事都在讲述同一个简单道理:没有人能随随便便成功。     

Firm size, web site content, and financial performance in the transportation industry

The transportation industry has been revolutionized by the World Wide Web with the Internet rapidly emerging as the optimal medium for the exchange of information between shippers and carriers throughout the supply chain. Despite this, many motor carrier firms may still not be placing enough emphasis on the Internet. Recent empirical research studies suggest that Internet utilization in the supply chain is significantly influenced by firm size. This study analyzes the informational and interactive content of the Top 100 U.S. motor carrier firms' web sites to examine the relationship between firm size and Internet utilization. In addition, as there is little research that assesses the payoff in terms of benefits for firms that place more emphasis on the Internet for commercial activity, secondary financial data are used to evaluate the association between Internet utilization and firm financial performance in the transportation industry.     

Value networks and two-sided markets of Internet content delivery

The volume and importance of content is increasing in the Internet, whereas the ability of the Internet architecture to scale to the growing demand for transport capacity is uncertain. Even though the natural growth in the demand continues, the growth in traffic volumes can be limited by reducing unnecessary content copying and redundant transportation of the same content. Information-centric networking (ICN), featuring globally unique naming of content and optimized in-network caching, has been suggested as a potential future solution to significantly reduce unnecessary traffic, but its economic feasibility has not been widely studied. This paper evaluates the economic feasibility of ICN by using the two-sided markets theory to analyze four Internet content delivery models: the client-server model, content delivery network (CDN) model, peer-to-peer model and ICN model. Value networks and two-sided markets of these content delivery models are identified in the process. The results suggest that content providers can be willing to pay for the lower delay of content delivery in ICN, if ICN can solve its coordination problems related to cost-allocation, contracting, quality of service guarantees, and content usage statistics. These incentive challenges are essentially the same as in-network web caching originally faced and could not overcome. Internet access providers may also consider investing in the deployment of ICN due to reduced interconnection costs. However, the ICN model may require a revenue-creating business model to make it more attractive to Internet access providers than the CDN model that provides similar cost savings.     

The Dubious Antitrust Argument for Breaking Up the Internet Giants

Recent calls for using the antitrust laws to break up the large Internet giants are misplaced for a number of reasons. First, similar efforts against oil, tobacco, motion-picture, and telecommunications monopolies have not proved to be beneficial to economic welfare. Second, the failure to break up Microsoft using Section 2 has not proved to be a mistake: competition in operating systems and Internet browsers has flourished recently. Finally, a Section 2 case against Amazon, Facebook, or Google could not succeed if it focused on the digital advertising market. Even in a case based on market power on the other side of their platforms, a structural remedy—a break-up—would not improve economic welfare in the long run.

     

Closing the rural broadband gap: Promoting adoption of the Internet in rural America

Even as geographic disparities in high speed Internet access narrow, an urban–rural broadband gap persists, pointing to the importance of individual differences in motivations to adopt broadband as the key to closing the gap. Diffusion of innovation is reconceptualized through contemporary perspectives of the digital divide and social cognitive theory and tested on a survey sample drawn from four rural communities. Path analysis was used to examine the factors that cause broadband Internet service adoption in rural communities. Prior experience with the Internet, the expected outcomes of broadband usage, direct personal experience with broadband, and self-efficacy had direct effects on broadband intentions. Age and income, but not education or ethnicity, also had direct impacts. Efforts that promote the personal benefits of broadband and advanced ICT literacy skills among Internet users are recommended.     

Market value effects of acquisitions involving internet firms: a resource‐based analysis

While most prior research suggests that the average change in market value of acquiring firms varies closely around zero, recent research grounded in the resource‐based view and organizational learning theory identify positive returns to acquirers. We contribute to this literature by focusing on acquisitions of Internet firms and the potential for the transfer of scarce resources. We hypothesize that acquisitions made by offline firms of Internet firms and by Internet firms of other Internet firms lead to positive market valuation for the acquirer. Results of an event study of 798 acquisitions of Internet firms provided support for these predictions. We also find that prior alliances with online firms do not reduce the gains from such acquisitions to offline firms. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Outsourcing versus joint venture from vendor’s perspective

Even though many studies have discussed outsourcing contracts from the client’s perspective, little research has been done from the vendor’s perspective. In this paper, we consider a vendor’s outsourcing contract decision-making process, during which the market price and the vendor’s operation cost are uncertain. This paper develops real option models to investigate whether a vendor firm should sign an outsourcing contract from its client or establish a joint venture with this client. Our results show that, while the feasibility of an outsourcing contract to the vendor increases with a higher contract price offered by the client, the feasibility of a joint venture depends on market conditions. We also find that there are loss-by-acceptance regions, in which either an outsourcing or a joint venture contract is currently feasible to start, but a vendor may sustain a loss by accepting such a contract.     

互联网时代电商平台商业模式创新文献综述

互联网时代商业模式的创新的研究已成为近几年财务金融、市场营销、公司治理等方面热点,研究主要体现在商业模式创新的种类与对财务的绩效影响方面,这些问题的研究仍有待深入.本文认为,互联网时代商业模式的创新需要结合互联网时代的特点与商业模式的要素进行分析.电商平台在互联网时代如何防范创新的商业模式对财务绩效带来的风险,如何应对...     

Urban wireless traffic evolution: The role of new devices and the effect of policy

The emergence of new wireless technologies, such as the Internet of Things, allows digitalizing new and diverse urban activities. Thus, wireless traffic grows in volume and complexity, making prediction, investment planning, and regulation increasingly difficult. This article characterizes urban wireless traffic evolution, supporting operators to drive mobile network evolution and policymakers to increase national and local competitiveness. We propose a holistic method that widens previous research scope, including new devices and the effect of policy from multiple government levels. We provide an analytical formulation that combines existing complementary methods on traffic evolution research and diverse data sources. Results for a centric area of Helsinki during 2020–2030 indicate that daily volumes increase, albeit a surprisingly large part of the traffic continues to be generated by smartphones. Machine traffic gains importance, driven by surveillance video cameras and connected cars. While camera traffic is sensitive to law enforcement policies and data regulation, car traffic is less affected by transport electrification policy. High-priority traffic remains small, even under encouraging autonomous vehicle policies. Based on peak hour results, we suggest that 5G small cells might be needed around 2025, albeit the utilization of novel radio technology and additional mid-band spectrum could delay this need until 2029. We argue that mobile network operators inevitably need to cooperate in constructing a single, shared small cell network to mitigate the high deployment costs of massively deploying small cells. We also provide guidance to local and national policymakers for IoT-enabled competitive gains via the mitigation of five bottlenecks. For example, local monopolies for mmWave connectivity should be facilitated on space-limited urban furniture or risk an eventual capacity crunch, slowing down digitalization.     

Development of the ICT sector and the determinants of Internet use in the Southern Caucasus

This paper examines Internet use in the Southern Caucasus by qualitative and quantitative methods. Firstly, as the developments in ICTs affect Internet use, the macroeconomic problems faced in the development of the sector are qualitatively analyzed. It is seen that high Internet service prices, government dominance, and lack of competition in the ICT sector as well as the wars in some regions are obstacles to Internet use. Finally, the determinants of Internet use are explored using survey data and employing microeconometric techniques considering sample selection. The empirical findings, inter alia, indicate that key variables contributing to frequent Internet use are computer ability in Armenia and computer ownership in Azerbaijan, and mobile phone ownership in Georgia.     

电商脱掉野蛮外衣

终于疲劳了。从＂6﹒18＂一直蔓延到＂8﹒15＂的电商价格血战,并未像京东商城CEO刘强东所豪言的＂此战之后再无大战＂,而是变奏为一种常态竞争行为,残留着碎了一地的营销口水。马云后来点评称＂（价格战）这类战术带有很浓重的上世纪工业时代的痕迹＂,各界也多以＂雷声大雨点小＂、＂虎头蛇尾＂等评论为主,